IDC Energy Insights survey reveals that Cybersecurity is the highest IT solution area of investment for Utilities in 2016

IT software spending of utilities in Western Europe was about $3.2 billion in 2015. Major areas of software spending for these utilities were customer care and billing (CC&B) and enterprise resource management (ERM).

In 2016, Western European utilities will invest the most of its IT budget in:

Cybersecurity and, in particular, on more strategic areas such as data loss and leakage prevention, mobile security, and cloud security.

Meter data management (MDM), engineering and design, and plant maintenance are the line-of-business IT solutions with high investment potential in the next 12 months for utilities’ asset operations

Regarding utilities’ customer operations, workforce mobility has the highest investment potential in the next 12 months.

Also, customer care solutions will be a high investment priority, expected to attract the most investments in new solutions, while billing solutions will attract the most investments in enhancements/upgrades.

Western European water utilities will invest the most in MDM and asset management solutions. For both, the majority of investments will be in new solutions.

With smart meter deployments picking up again in countries such as France and the U.K., Western European utilities will focus their IT solution investment potential on adopting new MDM solutions and, to a lesser extent, on enhancing/upgrading their existing MDM solutions in the next 12 months. Interestingly, this applies to water utilities as well.